enhttp://www.BerzinArchives.com/web/x/nav/group.html_1909906809.htmlDetails of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus DeterminismTue, 03 Mar 2015 02:44:29 +0100720Copyright: The Berzin Archives, www.BerzinArchives.comDr. Alexander BerzinDr. Alexander Berzinhttp://www.BerzinArchives.com/web/images/global/logo.gifDetails of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinismhttp://www.BerzinArchives.com/web/x/nav/group.html_1909906809.html100145Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus DeterminismDr. Alexander BerzincleanDetails of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session One: Introductionhttp://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_1_32kb.mp3http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_1_32kb.mp3(<em><a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_1_32kb.mp3" style="font-size:smaller" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session One: Introduction">audio + transcript</a></em>) <br /><br />This weekend we're going to be speaking about karma, and although the topic is announced as "karma: free will versus predetermination," that will be just a part of what we'll talk about. I'd like to go into some detail about what karma is, and what the various mental factors are that are involved with karma, and how karma works, so that we have a general idea of how does the question of free will versus predetermination fit into the Buddhist presentation of karma. Also I know that there are many questions that people have about karma and so I'd like to try to weave different themes here into our weekend. But we need to be quite clear from the very beginning that Buddha mentioned himself that karma is the most difficult thing to understand in his teachings, far more difficult to understand than voidness. So if it's complicated and if there are many aspects in it that we can't understand, then that's not something which we should be surprised at. That is of course the way that it is. Also we should realize that there are many explanations of karma within Buddhism. There's not just one explanation, and so this means that we can understand how karma works in many, many different ways, and the different systems will give us different insights into how karma works.<br /><br /> There's a presentation in the Theravada system which is very different from the presentations that we have in the systems that the Tibetans studied from India and it'll be just, I think, too confusing and complicated<a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_1_32kb.mp3" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session One: Introduction">...</a> <br /><br /><a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_1_32kb.mp3" style="font-size:smaller" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session One: Introduction">http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_1_32kb.mp3</a>Sun, 08 May 2011 20:11:55 +0100Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Two: Not-Yet-Happening Events and the Difference between Karmic and Non-karmic Actionshttp://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_2_32kb.mp3http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_2_32kb.mp3(<em><a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_2_32kb.mp3" style="font-size:smaller" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Two: Not-Yet-Happening Events and the Difference between Karmic and Non-karmic Actions">audio + transcript</a></em>) <br /><br />We've been discussing karma and we saw that there are various systems with which karma is explained, in general. But what we are speaking about when we talk about karma is our behavior, what brings on our behavior, and the effects of our behavior on ourselves, and how this builds up various habits and tendencies and so on which are going to then ripen into various things that we experience with, basically, suffering – various types of suffering of samsara, whether it's the suffering of pain and difficulty, or the suffering of change which is our ordinary type of happiness (but it doesn't last and doesn't satisfy), our so-called worldly happiness, or just the all-pervasive problem of samsara: that we continue to have this type of basic aggregates (body and mind and so on) that is going to continue to bring on the other types of suffering. So if we speak in terms of feelings, what we have is the regular type of suffering of pain, our ordinary, so-called "tainted" happiness, and then the neutral feeling which is associated just with having a body and a mind.<br /><br /> And so karma explains, basically, how this whole system gets perpetuated. And it has nothing to do with reward or punishment, which would imply some external figure from the system who is giving that reward or punishment. It is not deterministic, because it is possible to change what we experience; it's possible to change what we do. And it's not predetermined, because predetermined would imply that there is somebody<a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_2_32kb.mp3" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Two: Not-Yet-Happening Events and the Difference between Karmic and Non-karmic Actions">...</a> <br /><br /><a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_2_32kb.mp3" style="font-size:smaller" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Two: Not-Yet-Happening Events and the Difference between Karmic and Non-karmic Actions">http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_2_32kb.mp3</a>Sun, 08 May 2011 20:14:44 +0100Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Three: The Relation between Karma, the Origin of the Universe, and What Has Not Yet Happenedhttp://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_3_32kb.mp3http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_3_32kb.mp3(<em><a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_3_32kb.mp3" style="font-size:smaller" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Three: The Relation between Karma, the Origin of the Universe, and What Has Not Yet Happened">audio + transcript</a></em>) <br /><br />In our discussion of karma yesterday, we were speaking about the issue of free will or choice versus predetermination or determinism, in general. And we saw that there are many, many factors which are involved here and many pieces of the Buddhist teachings that we have to put together in order to understand what's going on with this whole issue. And we saw that free will implies that there is a "me" which is truly existent, independent from everything else that is going on, that could then make choices just based on itself, not relying on all the various circumstances, conditions, mental factors, and so on. And we saw this basic fallacy in this way of thinking, that choices do take place and they're based on various habits of, not only manners of behavior, but also habits – I'm using habits here in a very loose sense – from our disturbing emotions or positive emotions and so on. It could also be influenced by things that are not connected with our mental continuum, like various external circumstances: the physical circumstances of what's going on, of the weather, or the universe, or the circumstances from the influence of other people, people that we meet, society in general, governments and so on. And, similarly, the various teachings that we might come in contact with which also obviously derive from other people's mental continuums. And that choices do take place in terms of the mental factors of discriminating awareness, indecisiveness, and so on, intention, etc.;<a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_3_32kb.mp3" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Three: The Relation between Karma, the Origin of the Universe, and What Has Not Yet Happened">...</a> <br /><br /><a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_3_32kb.mp3" style="font-size:smaller" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Three: The Relation between Karma, the Origin of the Universe, and What Has Not Yet Happened">http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_3_32kb.mp3</a>Sun, 08 May 2011 20:18:21 +0100Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Four: The Analysis of Causality and Karmahttp://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_4_32kb.mp3http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_4_32kb.mp3(<em><a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_4_32kb.mp3" style="font-size:smaller" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Four: The Analysis of Causality and Karma">audio + transcript</a></em>) <br /><br />Our discussion has brought up several questions and several topics, which more pieces of the puzzle can be added to by looking into these topics, so that we have a larger picture of what’s involved with karma. One of these topics is the topic of the different types of causes, conditions, and effects. What actually are causes for what happens to us, causes for what we experience, causes for what we see? And there’s a list of six types of causes. We find this in Abhidharmakosha from Vasubandhu. Asanga gives more detail on them. I don’t want to go into tremendous detail about this because it’s really quite complicated, but just to give you a general idea of what’s involved.<br /><br /> We have, first of all, acting causes and these are all phenomena, other than the result itself, which did not impede the production of the result, which did not prevent the production of the result. Asanga includes even those that do impede the production of the result, so everything other than the phenomenon itself. The example is hail and a crop – a hailstorm. Hail, from Vasubandhu’s point of view, would impede the production of the crop; but Asanga would include it as a cause for the crop, because the crop will be smaller or will be damaged or it’ll be this or that. So it impedes the production of it, but it influences it. And Vasubandhu divides that into potent acting causes – such as a seed for a sprout; and impotent acting causes – such as the space that allows a sprout to grow; or the mother<a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_4_32kb.mp3" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Four: The Analysis of Causality and Karma">...</a> <br /><br /><a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_4_32kb.mp3" style="font-size:smaller" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Four: The Analysis of Causality and Karma">http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_4_32kb.mp3</a>Sun, 08 May 2011 20:22:36 +0100Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Five: Various Types of Results and Summaryhttp://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_5_32kb.mp3http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_5_32kb.mp3(<em><a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_5_32kb.mp3" style="font-size:smaller" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Five: Various Types of Results and Summary">audio + transcript</a></em>) <br /><br />We were speaking about the different types of causes and conditions and in order to finish that discussion, let's just give the five types of results.<br /><br /> First of all, there are ripened results. Ripened results are the unobstructive, unspecified items conjoined with the mental continuum of a limited being, such as the body, the consciousness, the feelings, which come from a ripening cause that was conjoined with his or her mental continuum. This is one of the results of karma. It comes only from constructive and destructive actions. Those were ripening causes. So, unspecified actions don't give any ripened result. Buddha didn't specify that it was constructive or destructive. So, ripened result would be the body, the mind, feelings of happy or unhappy – I'm a little bit unsure about a feeling of neutral, because that should be what comes from unspecified phenomenon, so that's not too clear here. But they speak particularly of happiness and unhappiness that we feel. Those are unspecified, which is quite interesting. So suffering is not something which is destructive – suffering itself, being unhappy. Something is destructive if it ripens into unhappiness or some further suffering; and suffering itself, or unhappiness itself, does not necessarily ripen into more suffering. Otherwise, if that were necessarily the case, it would be impossible to ever get rid of suffering. The same thing would be true of happiness. Happiness isn't necessarily constructive. Happiness is<a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_5_32kb.mp3" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Five: Various Types of Results and Summary">...</a> <br /><br /><a href="http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_5_32kb.mp3" style="font-size:smaller" title="Details of Karma for Understanding Free Will versus Determinism – Session Five: Various Types of Results and Summary">http://www.BerzinArchives.com/media/audio/en/hi/karma_free_will_32bit/karma_free_will_5_32kb.mp3</a>Sun, 08 May 2011 20:24:47 +0100